Wizblog

Pollack- What Went Wrong

This Ken Pollack essay in The Atlantic is the follow up to his popular book "The Threatening Storm", which was subtitled, "The Case For Invading Iraq". Pollack was perhaps the top Clinton administration analyst on Iraq, and his book helped generate support for the war in Iraq among politicians of both parties and the general public. Now he gets into "what went wrong" with intelligence estimates of Iraqi WMD programs, how it happened, and what we can do about it.

Although David Kay's team has found considerable evidence of WMD programs and capabilities, Pollack says that in the area of Iraq's nuclear threat our intelligence was way off:

The U.S. intelligence community's belief toward the end of the Clinton Administration that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program and was close to acquiring nuclear weapons led me and other Administration officials to support the idea of a full-scale invasion of Iraq, albeit not right away. The NIE's judgment to the same effect was the real linchpin of the Bush Administration's case for an invasion.

What we have found in Iraq since the invasion belies that judgment. Saddam did retain basic elements for a nuclear-weapons program and the desire to acquire such weapons at some point, but the program itself was dormant. Saddam had not ordered its resumption (although some reports suggest that he considered doing so in 2002). In all probability Iraq was considerably further from having a nuclear weapon than the five to seven years estimated in the classified version of the NIE.

Pollack isn't entirely consistent in that he calls the administration's "rush" to war "reckless" in light of what appears now to have been exaggerated estimates of Iraqi WMD capability, while at the same time praising the liberation of the Iraqi people and the fall of Saddam. He admits that "containment was failing" and that the U.N. Security Council behavior was "shameful", and would have led to an eventual reduction of sanctions and a reconstitution of Saddam's weapons programs, had he been left in power.

So while he still thinks we did the right thing, Pollack is persuasive that the Bush people bought into and exploited those particular aspects of our intelligence that tended to justify the action they felt it was necessary to undertake, to the exclusion of opposing opinions and points of view. There were several compelling justifications for liberating Iraq, with the humanitarian one being enough standing on its own to make the case in my mind. But it seems now that the WMD case was shaky indeed. We deserved better from our President and his administration.

The truth is that there is a whole lot we were wrong about, and Pollack is right to suggest that our future credibility is at stake, and we need to stand up and admit we messed up, and that we're going to fix what was broken in our intelligence apparatus. I hope this administration gets around to that soon, though I'm not holding my breath. This whole article is well worth reading for a fairly balanced presentation of the issues.